The Flood Defences

by Peter Robinson

1

The boatman shows his photographs
of how things used to be
here at Oku–Matsushima
now half Japan in miniature
has fallen off a cliff.

That chance–made, cropped–out map
with bonsai moss–tree crust
has been eaten away by polluted air,
irradiated oysters, Chinese sand,
by all their flat–lined years . . .

2

Firm still on the helm, he points,
manoeuvring his craft
into a cove of wave–curved stone,
is pointing out a green lagoon
underneath its pine–topped rockface.

Expert, calm, he’s rightly proud of
all this natural artistry,
but veers around now, as explained,
when suddenly the offing roughens
and lighthouse island drops away.

3

He’ll take us back along the seawall
newly raised against those waves.
After that great one sucked and came,
months on, local fishermen
found human hair in catches’ guts.

His boat accelerates, slams and bucks.
It kicks against a running swell.
Spray’s freshening our faces
caught amid the sculptural forces,
their exhilarated shocks.

4

Fishing boats moored beside a mole
are jostled out along the headland.
At intervals, a next bay’s spume
shoots through its wind–bent pines.

Newly raised against those waves,
likewise, here at Tsukihama
round its crescent–moon–shaped beach
they’ve built a higher seawall too.

5

Rose–bloom nets draped on old concrete,
a casual clutter, rust, and the rest,
those years ago, looked set to resist
erosion and encroachment all around.

You’ll search in vain now for dreck and wrack,
tarred, tangled ropes, a crusted anchor,
house doors open onto silence . . .
all swept away, its people lost.

6

Yet how that place comes flooding back
in a borrowed house on Yagiyama
when what had rattled screen and window
starts high ripples in its pond . . .

Then how your poor joke comes back too —
‘No tsunamis up here at Matsunami–cho . ..’
Yes, how it all comes flooding back
to chasten and chastise you.